The June rating supplement is out, and so here’s the list:

• Raymond Hayes is tied for 47^th on the Seniors list.
• Erik Santarius is tied for 21^st among 18 year olds.
• Dane Mattson is 35^th among 18 year olds.
• Derek Paitrick is 46^th among 18 year olds.
• Sirhei Biareishyk is 61^st among 18 year olds.
• Jeremy Kane is 34^th among 16 year olds.
• Jake Kohlenberg is 61^st among 16 year olds.
• Brian Luo is 1^st among 8 year olds.
• Alexander Velikanov is 3^rd among 8 year olds.

Congratulations to the players who made the list (and their teachers).

What does that say for the rest of us? The most glaring needs this list shows us is the need to involve middleschool players and girls of all ages in the Wisconsin chess scene. The fact we have no one on the lists between 8 and 16, and no girls on any lists points out to us where we’ve been ignoring chess in our state programs.

Now, Brian and Sasha will have an effect as they age. We’ve seen it before where one good player in a specific age group suddenly lifts everyone around them, as they all have a target to shoot at. Ashish Vaja before, and Erik Santarius now, created “bubbles” around them of similarly-skilled players.

But there’s an 8-year gap between Kane/Kohlenberg and the next set of prime duellers on the scene. And no one has arisen from the distaff side. We can do better.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 6th, 2006 at 11:43 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.